The Feast of All Saints

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. 

On this day we remember the communion of saints. In the prayerbook, it is described as,  “...the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.”  Sometimes we call this communion, ‘a great cloud of witnesses.’

We remember all of the faithful Christians who have gone before us; the holy people we have known during our life of faith. Including members of our faith community who died this past year: Carol Johnson, John Bednarski, Jane Gardner, Ced Bannister, Felicia Finck, and Rick Gwosch - just to name a few.  We remember all of the great saints canonized and/or commemorated by the Church, like Mary, James, and Andrew. People who lived exemplary lives of faith, and who will continue to inspire the faithful for generations. 

We also remember all souls, faithful Christians or not.  From the very beginning, God made it clear that each and every person is made in their image and likeness (Gen 1:26 NRSV). In that same spirit, God has a place for everyone at their eternal table, where the great cloud of witnesses feasts on God’s abundant love, mercy, and grace. No matter how long or short our lives may be, how well or poorly we have lived, God has been with us, and does not abandon us, even at the grave. 

So today we remember.  We remember our loved ones and the many ways they inspired, challenged, and changed us. We give thanks for them and honor them. In those relationships that were trying, we continue to seek to forgive them; to learn, be changed, and somehow use those experiences for good. 

On this day we are asked to remember with our whole bodies. We recollect these saints in our minds and in our hearts through stories. They come alive again in our eyes through photographs, momentos, and icons. When we let ourselves slow down enough to be in touch with the space around us, we can physically feel the thin veil that separates us from those in eternity. This visceral experience connects us to our ancestors in faith, as well as, our familial ancestors. We recognize they are here with us, helping us to live out our life of faith as best we are able. This connection provides sustenance and courage, and helps us to lean more deeply on our Creator, on Christ, and on the Holy Spirit. 

We need the sustenance and courage of our ancestors now more than ever. As we head into this week’s general election, there is a palpable anxiety that crosses every socioeconomic and political line in our nation, and that ripples out beyond our borders into the rest of the world. Neighbors may not agree on politicians or policies, but we share a sense of uncertainty, angst, and at times, despair. When we look back on our ancestors we see people who lived through incredibly challenging times and demonstrated resilience and perseverance. They embodied a devout and robust faith that continues to inspire long after. No matter what they faced, these faithful continued to see each and every person as a beloved child of God, when it would have been far easier not to. Their faith deepened at times when others would have abandoned faith altogether. In the spirit of drawing on the strength of these courageous saints, I’d like to reflect on two saints that I am particularly thankful for on this All Saints Day.

I give thanks for Saint Benedict of Nursia, a devout man of faith who introduced monasticism to the Western Church. Monastics are people who devote their lives to God by committing to a religious order and life in community, typically holding their possessions in common or in trust, and living by certain vows. These vows often include poverty, chastity, and obedience. 

Saint Benedict lived in Nursia, Italy during the early sixth century. Benedict was deeply troubled by the political instability and the injustices playing out within the remains of the fallen Roman Empire. He withdrew to the hillside where at least one other monk was already living. A community of monastics grew up around him, and eventually he and some of his disciples moved further south and formed a second community of what we would now call Benedictine monks. Near the mid-sixth century Benedict published his Rule of Life. Benedict’s Rule instructed those in the order to break their day into a routine structure which led to roughly four hours of liturgical prayer, five hours of spiritual reading, six hours of work, one hour of eating, and about eight hours of sleep. This text would go on to form the basic guidelines of monastic life, of which many other orders would eventually base their own Rules. More recently, the idea that any of us might live by a personal Rule of Life has taken root, and many find this to be a meaningful spiritual practice.

I first encountered the teachings of Saint Benedict when I traveled with a high school boyfriend to visit his uncle, who was a monk at Saint Anselm Abbey and College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. When we arrived on the campus, I felt like I had come home. The air of the grounds felt as sacred as walking into a magnificent cathedral. The brothers' devotion to that physical place, daily prayer, and community life had hallowed the grounds over the previous hundred and twenty years.  I would eventually learn that the Benedictine brothers at Saint Anselm took a vow of stability, committing themselves to that place and community for the rest of their lives. They felt called to invite others into their sacred space - their home, and provide higher education to those with the least access to it, the children of millworkers in nearby Manchester.

I went home from that visit determined to spend my college years living amidst that community, and a couple of years later I began my time as a student there. The teachings of Saint Benedict infused community life for the brothers, and in turn they infused the teachings and values of Saint Benedict into the wider community. Their values of daily prayer, study, and work shaped us as students, and provided us with the opportunity to approach our own lives in the same way. 

When I eventually left the safety and comfort of that communal life, I became curious if the Episcopal Church had monastic orders and discovered our own Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. These brothers are in our backyard, and similarly, invite us into their space for prayer and retreat. Whether I am with them on retreat or here living out my life reading one of their reflections, I experience their devotion to daily prayer, worship, and community life inspiring and healing. 
Benedict and the faithful brothers and sisters of many religious orders continue to shape and guide, and their devotion models what it looks like to be people of prayer. They give us courage and help to dig into our prayer life, and they prove again and again that prayer shapes and changes us for the better. Their modeling shows us how to keep going, to keep walking in faith, no matter how much uncertainty may lie ahead.


The second saint is the one that most influenced my understanding of the Gospel: Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, a Peruvian Catholic priest and philosopher who died last week. Gutiérrez is considered the grandfather of Liberation Theology, a movement that took root with the publication of his 1971 book,  A Theology of Liberation. This theology proclaims that our first responsibility as Christians is to care for those enduring poverty, injustice, and marginalization.  God stands with the poor first and foremost, and so should we. 

Gutiérrez wrote alongside other similar thinkers, and together they shaped the local Roman Catholic response to injustice across Latin America in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. One of the most well known early practitioners of liberation theology was Saint Oscar Romero, Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador. Romero protested the El Salvadoran government’s unjust treatment of the poor and their policies of torture. He used his leadership position to inform the Pope of the government’s acts of terror and assassinations, and pleaded with the American government to stop military aid to his country. While his request was ignored, Romero stood beside the poor, and it ultimately cost him his life when he was murdered while celebrating the eucharist in March 1980. Romero was one of many martyrs who died while standing beside the poor, and he has inspired generations of faithful since to embrace the teachings of liberation theology. 

Since then liberation theology has evolved and spread across Christian denominations. There are now many different branches,  including: Black; Feminist; Womanist; Native American; Queer; Eco Justice; and Disability liberation theology. These theologians demand that we never stop exploring what it means to walk in love, to examine the injustices of our world, and prayerfully reflect on how God calls us to respond to those injustices. They show us what it means to dig in when times are tough, and that the Good News of God’s Love will always persevere, no matter how hard things get. They remind us that our calling as the Church is to join God, literally and metaphorically, in standing beside those enduring poverty, injustice, and marginalization.  Because together, anything is possible. When we look back and see all the progress that has been made through Gutierrez and other liberation theologians and practitioners, it brings to mind what Saint Martin Luther King, Jr. knew and preached, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

In preparing to write this sermon, I made a mental list of the saints that touched my life. It was startlingly long, but it also left me with a heart full of gratitude. The exercise reconnected me to the depth and strength of their faith, giving a much needed boost of courage to keep walking in love, no matter how difficult things may be. 

Today, I invite each of us to go home and make a list of the saints that have most influenced our lives. As we navigate through the week ahead, I would invite each of us to draw strength on those saints by spending a few minutes each day reflecting on one of them. To ask ourselves:

• Who was this saint and how did they influence our life?
  
• What core values did they teach us to embrace?
  
• How did this saint overcome adversity, persevere, and embody resilience?
  
• How do they continue to give us strength and courage today? 
  

Amen. 







* A Great Cloud of Witnesses, 2016. 

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